Swampscott Elementary School

Swampscott Elementary School is a K–4 school in Swampscott, Massachusetts (Essex County) serving 734 students — a large enrollment for a building that ends at grade 4 — located about 1.5 to 3 miles from a ring of neighboring schools in Marblehead, Salem, and Lynn.

Academically, the school performs solidly above the state average and lands in the top third of Massachusetts elementary schools. About 48.9% of students met expectations in English language arts and about 46.7% in math, compared with roughly 40% and 41% statewide. Among the 11 nearby schools compared here, it ranks third in both subjects — behind only Marblehead's Lucretia and Joseph Brown School (64.4% ELA / 66.3% math) and Glover (56.5% / 50.6%), and ahead of every other school in the group. The school itself holds a 3-star rating (345th of 899 schools, 62nd percentile), while its district, Swampscott, is rated 4 stars (91st of 351 districts, 74th percentile) — so the district's rating outpaces this school's own.

Grade 3 is the clear strength here: results run about 9.6 points above the state in ELA and 7.8 points above in math. Grade 4 stays above the state in ELA, but its math result (43.05%) is essentially level with the state (43.20%) — the one place where the school's advantage disappears, and the last measured elementary result for that group. Staffing is another plus: 11.5 students per teacher is among the lowest in the area, below both Marblehead schools and Salem's Saltonstall, despite a larger enrollment. The school also stands out for how well it serves some groups relative to other schools statewide — Hispanic students (79th percentile) and special education students (72nd percentile) rank above its overall 62nd percentile — while low-income students sit near the median (49th percentile). A few data limits are worth knowing: free and reduced-price lunch figures are suppressed for this school and its neighbors, per-student spending is not reported for this school, science is not tested until grade 5, and only one year of school-level ranking is available, so no year-over-year trend can be drawn.